


Epigraphs for our Love

by Novels



Series: Reprise [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, all the feels, book-verse, set right after the end of the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 19:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20087611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novels/pseuds/Novels
Summary: The story begins right when the book ends, with Oliver leaving once again.It is my take on what could happen if Oliver actually started acting on his feelings instead of suppressing them.





	Epigraphs for our Love

**Author's Note:**

> I have a huge debt towards Aciman, whose novel dragged me out of a reader's and writer's block that lasted way too much.  
His ability to write from Elio's point of view in such an intimate, profound, pure way is simply unique and cannot be matched.  
I tried to stick to his writing style, nonetheless, simply because I love the way it allows to convey the emotions of the protagonists.  
The story is unbeta'ed, all mistakes are mine.  
Enjoy!

I watched the cab drive away, my hand still raised in goodbye. I let it fall as the car took a turn and disappeared behind the trees lining the road. I stood there, arms by my side, staring at the empty road without really seeing it. In my mind I was in the backseat of the cab with Oliver, my hand still in his, holding on tight, refusing to accept our last touch to be but a mere handshake at the gate of my old villa. 

It was a breathtaking day of summer, the sky as clear and blue as our last day in Rome, a light breeze the only relief from the heat. Then, we had said goodbye with too much silence and too many words left unspoken. Today, we had done just the same. A hesitant smile, an aborted gesture that could have been a hug but became the briefest pat on my shoulder, a strong handshake staring into each other's eyes for a moment, before he lowered his. 

Oliver left once more, taking with him an infinite number of possibilities, an even higher number of impossibilities. The phantom touch of his hand lingered on my shoulder, on my fingertips. I brought them up to my lips, curling them slightly into a fist, pressing them against my closed mouth. I placed a soft kiss on my knuckles and the whisper of my name drifted through my fingers, lost in the absence of its owner. 

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Eventually, I walked back to the house. The familiar sounds of Mafalda working in the kitchen drew me in and I leaned against the doorframe as I watched her roll out the yellow dough into a thin layer ready to be cut, filled, and folded into her famous tortellini. Old age had not slowed down her movements and her fingers crafted the tiny knots of pasta as if it were second nature. She looked up at me and smiled, her hands never stopping.

"Elio," she said, half in acknowledgment and half to bring my attention back to her words, rather than her hands. "Oliver ha lasciato qualcosa di sopra." Oliver left something upstairs. 

I felt my body grow tense at that innocent sentence and I tried to keep my conflicted feelings from showing. By the way Mafalda's expression softened, it was evident I failed. 

"L’ho lasciato sul letto, I've left it on the bed," she said, nodding towards the ceiling as if to encourage me to go upstairs and find out what new ways to torture me Oliver had found this time. "Go upstairs," her eyes seemed to be saying, "and be done with it." 

Why did he have to do this to me? Twenty years later, and time seemed to have conflated into an instant. I could feel the texture of his shirt against my face, damp with tears, losing his distinct smell as the days passed, until my scent took over and all was left of him was a memory branded into my mind and an unmendable tear into the fabric of my soul.

I nodded and headed upstairs, resenting how his actions could still upset me, my carefully crafted independence from him, my self, deprived of its better part when Oliver chose to live a parallel life. I dreaded what I could find behind the closed door of his room, I feared the pain it would cause me, once more a relapse into an illness with only one cure, no longer available, perhaps never truly existing in the first place.

The room was pristine, Mafalda having lost no time in tidying it up as soon as Oliver had packed his bag earlier this morning. The French windows were open and the white curtains swelled in the wind. My eyes stared at them for a moment, remembering our nights together, uncaring of the heat, our bodies entwined, our hearts beating in tandem. 

The box was on the bed, wrapped in heavy green paper with a small silver bow. My name was scrawled directly on the wrapping paper, his handwriting just as I remembered it. I traced the letters with my fingertips before I picked up the package and sat down on the bed to open it. I knew what it was even before I started unwrapping it, our conversation about it still fresh in my mind, still painful in my soul. _ Cor Cordium_. Heart of hearts. I finished unwrapping the framed postcard and turned it upside down to see the inscription. I found a letter instead, stuck to it with tape. It had his name written on it.

Oliver. I felt the air leave my lungs as I stared at those six letters, so meaningless on their own until they found their right place within his name, my name. 

My fingers trembled as they fumbled with the tape, then with the envelope. It contained three pages, written in Oliver's neat handwriting with different inks and paper. All the pages had a different date on the top right corner, several years apart. The first was dated July 1984.

I let out a shaky breath as I started to read. 

_ New York, July 1984 _

_ Dear Elio, _

_ Exactly one year has passed since I first met you. 365 days. I feel like I don't know myself anymore. I don't feel myself anymore. I think, no, I know that I left the best part of me with you in Italy. I called you by my name and now, when people call me by it, it feels wrong. 'I am not Oliver,' I want to shout. "Call me by my real name, call me Elio." _

_ I used to be so sure of the things I wanted in life, my Elio, my Oliver. I knew I wanted to make everyone proud, I knew I wanted to be the son my parents deserved, the partner my fiancée deserved. _

_ I am not that person anymore, Elio. I am but the ghost of it. I walk and talk and behave like I used to, but it feels like I'm living in an alternate reality. A parallel life, where we never met and I continue to make other people happy. _

_ I am not happy. I am getting married in a month, I'll probably be tenured in a couple of years, I have everything I thought I ever wanted. But I am not happy. I wish I could call the wedding off, move to Italy, be with you. I yearn for it, for you. I miss you so much, Elio. I miss the way you know everything, I miss the way you say things, I miss your attitude, the banter, the silences. I miss your fingers as they play Bach in any way some other composer would have, I miss them as they play Bach just as he would have, as I required from you. I miss your touch, your body in my arms, your kisses. I miss all of you, always. _

_ I am a coward, Elio, I will not call the wedding off. I will not fly to Italy without a return ticket. I will not be with you. I will not send this letter. It would destroy my life and there's nothing I want to do more, but I can't. I cannot find the courage. _

_ I will live this life I've chosen, I will learn to hide the pain, to embrace your absence. I will be a good husband and father and son. I will never be Elio again. I won't be Oliver either. _

_ With love _

The letter was not signed. My tears filled the place of his signature. I could not explain why I was crying. Perhaps for the potential that this letter held almost twenty years ago. Perhaps for the knowledge that Oliver suffered just as much as I did, and had no one to turn to when he felt that the world was crushing him. Perhaps because I was angry, so angry at him for making this decision for both of us, for not giving me the chance to fight for us. I brushed away the tears with the back of my hand and picked up the second page.

It was shorter, and the ink was in some parts almost washed away by tears shed a long time ago.

_ New York, November 1997 _

_ Dear Elio, _

_ A colleague has just told me your father has passed away. _

_ I cannot find the words to express my grief. I am sitting in my office, trying to hold in my tears, but I fear it's a lost cause. Elio, I am so, so sorry. I wish I was there for you, I wish I could hold you tight as you cry, I wish I could help you heal. I have loved your father dearly, I have treasured his advice. He has been my mentor and my friend, a soothing voice when doubt overtook me and I felt I had no one else to talk to. Still, I feel like I have no right to mourn him. I let him down time and time again, when I left you, when I came back and shattered your hopes, when I went through with my wedding. When I decided to live a lie every single day. _

_ Your father was one of the best men I have ever known. You take after him. _

_ As he would say, do not suppress the pain, Elio. Embrace it. But don't let it devour you. Feel it, so that you can feel the good memories, too. _

_ This is how I live every day. With the pain, so that I can remember the joy. _

_ I will not send this letter. It will join the others I wrote and never sent. This is not the time to reach out to you. I don't know if a time will ever come. _

_ I dread the idea of not seeing you again. I dread the idea of seeing you, as well. _

Five years ago. Thinking about my father had always a melancholic feeling to it, but it had stopped hurting so much. Oliver was right, if you embraced the pain you also embraced the joy. I had learnt the lesson a long time ago. I repeated my father’s words as a mantra every time the pain felt too overwhelming to be born. I made sure I remembered it all. The good and the bad alike. 

I took a big breath and picked up the last page. It was dated July 19, 2003. Yesterday.

_ Somewhere in Italy, July 19, 2003 _

_ Dear Elio, _

_ I have been tormenting myself over giving you these letters for weeks. I think it might be the most selfish thing I've done since I left you for a life I was more comfortable living. _

_ I was sure that I could live this parallel life and be content with it. Not happy, not really, not ever, because I left real happiness here with you a long time ago. But content. Satisfied of the man I am, the father I am. There are a lot of things I don't regret from this life, Elio. My sons are the most precious thing to me. I love my job. I care for my wife. But I am turning 45 in a few months, and I think it is time I stop pretending. I had lived with the pain of your absence for so long I had almost stopped noticing it was there. Then you took a risk and came to see me. And told me you'd do this all over again. The pain, the loss, the happiness. _

_ I cannot stop thinking about it, Elio, about you. I had long buried any hope of meeting you again, let alone of having you in my arms again. You should have moved on. I should have, too. But having you back in my life made me remember. I never forgot, not really, but now I remember everything once more. _

_ What we had was precious, and rare, and to be treasured. _

_ I threw it all away once. I won't make the same mistake twice. _

_ I am going to Menton, and then I'm flying back to New York. My wife and I are divorcing. _

_ I have no right to ask you to do this. I have no expectations that you will. But I hope, I pray you will. _

_ Come back and call me by your name again. _

_ Yours, forever. _

_ Oliver _

I sat with his last letter in my hands for a long time, reading his words over and over again. Call me by your name again. I'm divorcing. Come back. I kept second-guessing the meaning of his letter, although there was very little space for misunderstanding. He wanted me, he was begging me to take him back. To give him my name once more. Mine, forever, for good. 

The sun set without me noticing as I sat on the bed we once shared and thought. For the first time in twenty years, I allowed myself to truly imagine a life with him. What it would be like to settle in New York with him, meet his children, become part of his life. Face his parents, his wife. Wake up every morning with him in my bed, in my arms. Grow old together. What would he taste like after all these years? What would his body feel like against mine? How much will experience have changed him? How much will it have changed me? 

I sat on the bed, and for the first time in twenty years, it felt like I was making plans to go home, to stop running, to stop looking for an answer I knew where to find all along. 

As the bell rang to call for dinner, I realised I was debating with myself over something I had already decided twenty years ago, and every moment afterwards when I refused to settle for an alternative. 

I folded the letters and put them back in their envelope. I placed the postcard on the desk, leaning it against the wall._ Cor Cordium _. I was ready to add my inscription to it.

*

I walked down the corridor without haste, checking carefully the names on the doors. I remembered quite well where Oliver's office was but I took my time to get there, measuring my steps and my breathing. It was late afternoon on a beautiful day of August and most of the doors were closed, the rooms behind them empty as the professors left early to enjoy the sun and the lack of students on campus. When I reached Oliver's office, his door was open. He was bent over his desk, immersed in a stack of pages that seemed alarmingly covered in red ink. He huffed and drew another red line, scribbling something on the margins of the page. 

I knocked lightly and he mumbled a 'come in' without looking up, focused on the comment he was writing. I stepped in and closed the door behind me.

"Would you mind leaving it open--" His question died on his lips as his eyes met mine. 

"Elio," he whispered, his voice betraying his emotions. 

"You didn't leave an address," I said as a way of explanation for my presence at his workplace.

He stared at me for a few long seconds, as if he wanted to make sure I wouldn't disappear and he would be left with one more wound to heal. 

"I-- you are right, I didn't." He didn't have to say out loud that he didn't bother to leave an address because he thought I wouldn't come. I heard it just the same. 

I took a few steps towards him, his desk still between us. I placed a wrapped package on it, pushing it towards him. 

"What is this?" he asked, taking it. His eyes told me he had already understood.

"C'mon, open it," I replied even though he was already tearing the paper apart.

He held the framed postcard of the berm in his hands, staring at it with a small smile. I could read his guarded expression as if it were mine. In a sense it was. Why was I giving this back, he was wondering, why was I here? I reached out and turned the postcard upside down for him, so that he could see the back side.

A new line stood under his inscription. 

"We had found the stars, you and I," he read out loud. He stared at me with the most honest expression, the wonder and despair and unrestrained happiness in his eyes reflecting what he could see in mine. "And this is given once only."

He placed the postcard on his desk carefully, then he stood and walked up to me. He stopped a few inches short of touching, reaching out and caressing my cheek tenderly. I leaned into his hand, closing my eyes, savouring his closeness. 

"Thank you," he murmured, "for being here. Please, forgive me for being a coward for all these years."

I opened my eyes and stared into his. My love, my friend, my past, my future, my present, myself.

"Elio," I said, softly.

He inhaled deeply, as if he could finally breathe freely again. "Oliver."

He repeated his name over and over again, as he placed feathery kisses on my forehead, my eyelids, my nose. Gentle, reverential. I took the step that closed the distance between us, bringing our bodies together, our mouths meeting each other, our souls losing themselves as we kissed away those twenty years apart. 

Twenty years ago was yesterday. Today time started flowing again.


End file.
